The Key To Happiness
by Princess Pinky
Summary: The door to the next phase of Amy's life opens the moment she arrives at her new apartment in New York.


**A/N:** So the finale was the first episode I've watched since the mockery that was Mercy's death. I was so thrilled about the Ramy breakup that I had to write some Benamy ficage!

_**The Key To Happiness**_

The key was brand new, still containing the paper barcode from Wal-Mart. Amy Juergens ran the pad of her thumb along the uneven edge, feeling the sharp teeth of the metal cut less than twenty-four hours earlier. The light of dawn had barely broken and when she held up the key, she could see a blurry image of herself reflected back in the silver. It somehow seemed a metaphor for her future.

Amy lifted the key to the lock and slid it inside. She twisted it and heard the gears inside release, then she moved it to the top lock and expected it to be as easy as the first, as easy as the lock was at the butcher shop, but it hitched. Frazzled, she jiggered the key, twisted the handle, and shoved at the door to no avail. "Is this a sign?" she asked. "Is this a sign that my dad was right?" Amy closed her eyes and thought of her mother: Anne had never finished college because she got pregnant with Amy and George had mocked her for wanting to continue her Women's Studies. Amy grit her teeth, recalling how her father had tried to tell her that she needed to sacrifice everything for her son.

"Was he sacrificing when he was cheating on Mom? Was he sacrificing when he was keeping Robie from David? Was he sacrificing when told me he wouldn't help me pay to go to college in New York?" She let her hand fall away from the key and inhaled as deeply as she could. The smell of New York exhausted seasoned air rolled into her lungs. It wasn't pretty, but she'd been yearning for it ever since she'd left. "I'm doing the right thing," she said and opened her eyes again.

This time she took hold of the key, turned it back to the start, and reworked the lock. It was a new key and new keys didn't always work, she reminded herself, sometimes they needed to be worn in a little. This time, she heard the lock disengage. Satisfied, she retracted the key and slid it back into the pocket of her purse, making a mental note to get a new keychain for it later. The door to the apartment swung open and Amy lingered a while before stepping over the threshold.

Inside, it smelled like Ben's house. The scent caught her by surprise and made her head whirl a little. She was surprised to find that it smelt right. Some of her anxiety wafted into the atmosphere as she pushed the door closed and locked it. She left her luggage by the door and began to explore the basement floor that she would call home for the next four years.

Even for a single floor, it was twice as large as Ricky's apartment above the butcher shop back in Valley Glen; everything in New York seemed to dwarf Valley Glen. Somehow she'd expected the floors to be wooden, but they were plush carpet, the color of the Atlantic ocean. Amy crouched down and ran her fingers over the fibers that were thicker than her son's head of hair, but just as soft. A kind of chemical scent rose from them, probably from being newly cleaned. She stood up again and moved into the bathroom, where she found a bowl of a neo bear claw bathtub as big as the bedroom she used to share with Ricky. Then her heart skipped a beat as she ran to find her bedroom: it was a little bigger than the one she'd had at home, before she moved in with Ricky, and entirely furnished.

Amy threw herself onto the bed and rolled around on the cool floral comforter until her hair was a knotty mess in her face and her limbs hurt from flailing. She finally lay spread eagle, suddenly wishing John was there to roll around on the bed with her. No, _jump_ on the bed with her! She sniffed a little as she thought of what he might be doing, hopefully sleeping and not dreaming of her. She cried silently until her tear ducts ran dry and so did her face. When she sat up, peeled the strands of golden brown hair away from her stained cheeks, and pushed off her new bed.

Her stomach roared like a freight train, but a quick search of the rest of the floor revealed there was no kitchen or even kitchenette. "The second floor," she realized, looking up. There was a locking door that led to a staircase that she followed up to the next floor. When she walked through, she instinctively glanced up at the ceiling, knowing that it was Ben's floor. Her chest inflated just a bit.

"_Are you madly in love with Ben?"_

Amy shook the memory of Ricky's voice out of her head. He didn't know about her e-diary and he never would; all her secret thoughts and speculations and admissions about her feelings for Ben, her jealousy of Adrian, and her belief that her now ex-fiancé could have been happy with the woman who had been her enemy of sorts throughout high school. He'd always known Adrian inside and out, something that had never come to pass between herself and Ricky. "Maybe now that they're in college and I'm not…" She let the thought linger in the air before quickly charging through it to get to the kitchen.

The refrigerator was stocked when she opened it, primarily with Boykewich Butcher products, but also milk, eggs, a few avocados, and some plums. There were condiments and butter in the door as well. Amy pulled out the jug of milk and poured herself a glass. She wasn't in the mood to cook anything, even though she was starving. "Warm milk always put me to bed when I was little," she said to herself as she set the cup in the microwave and turned it on. Suddenly she was back at home, back in time, staring at John's bottle spinning in the microwave. Her stomach lurched when the timer finally went off and warm milk didn't seem such a good idea anymore.

Frustrated, she dropped into the nearest chair at the round table, reminding her vaguely of the one in her old house, where she'd first told her mother she was pregnant. Amy put her head in her hands and pressed the palms of her hands into the wells of her eyes until she could only see colors dancing against the darkness. She stayed like that for a long time, until her stomach forgot that she was so hungry.

The next time she saw something other than the amorphous shapes and colors, her arms were on the table and her head was on her piled arms. She realized a string of drool had soaked into her sleeve and she quickly wiped her mouth and sat up. A blanket slipped down her shoulders and settled behind her back, between her body and the chair. She couldn't remember falling asleep. Or getting a blanket. "A blanket," she said out loud. The smell of barbequed wings suddenly permeated her senses and she stood up abruptly. The kitchen was awash with daylight and there on the counter was a plate covered in tin foil like a miniature mountain.

Amy tentatively peeled back the foil and discovered the source of the smell: freshly cooked barbequed wings, her favorite. Her stomach rumbled and her mouth watered without permission. She grabbed one and bit into it, savoring the sweet and spicy taste. She grabbed another before heading out to the living room, where she found Ben seated on the couch with a plate of wings and a napkin spread across his chest.

"I see you found breakfast," he smiled. "Or lunch."

Amy nodded. "Thanks." She noted the empty couch cushion on the seat beside him and hesitated before sitting down. The smile on his face didn't escape her. "For the breakfast _and_ the blanket."

Ben shrugged. "They were always your favorite."

"Yeah…you always knew that."

Amy tried not to think about the day Ben proposed, but the memory had her by a headlock and wouldn't let her go until she'd properly acknowledged it. At that moment, she noticed Ben glancing at her ring finger, which was bare. She swallowed and prepared herself for him to comment on that fact, but he didn't, and instead he turned his attention back to the television. "What are you watching?"

"Reality show."

"Oh?"

"_Deal or No Deal."_

"I thought that was off the air?"

"Reruns."

"I hate reality shows."

"Me too."

"Then why are you–"

"I don't know," Ben shrugged. "Why do we stick with anything we don't love?"

Amy bit her tongue. "I like _Chopped_."

Ben nodded. "The cooking reality shows are good."

"I like the beauty of them," Amy explained. "I like seeing what happens when you throw all these random things at the contestants and end up seeing what kind of wondrous things that they make of them."

Ben gazed at Amy as she nibbled the last bite of meat off her wing. "I'm glad you came," he said.

"I didn't know if I would."

"Yes you did."

Amy bowed her head. "Yeah, I guess I did."

"Wanna compare schedules?" he asked. "I was thinking of going down to Hudson soon and just familiarizing myself with my classrooms and the easiest routes from one to the other."

Amy nodded. "That's a good idea."

"You could come too, if you want."

"I–" Amy rotated the small bone between her fingers. "I need to get cleaned up…first."

"But you'll go?"

"Yeah."

Ben grinned. "I'll wait for you."

"I know," Amy smiled in spite of herself. "You always have." She pushed off the couch and piled a small plate of wings in the kitchen before returning to her basement floor. She ate each wing in silence until the bones littered the plate and her fingertips were stained orange from the sauce. She didn't bother to take the plate back upstairs, instead she showered and ransacked her luggage for something to wear.

For the first time in such a long time, she pulled out something that wasn't black: a pink and green sundress with a watermelon pattern. She slid it on, paired it with green flats, and checked herself in the mirror. Satisfied, she tossed her purse over her shoulder and headed back up to the second floor, where she discovered Ben had already cleaned up and put away the leftover wings. "You look nice."

"So do you."

Amy felt the corners of her lips tugging. "Ready?"

"Always."

Amy moved to the door, but Ben was quicker, opening it for her. She gave into her smile and stepped into the sunlight. The warmth massaged her bare arms and legs. There were suddenly a thousand places she wanted to go, places she wanted to return to and places she'd never been. She reached into her purse as Ben shut the door and fingered her new key again.


End file.
